If any of you are not in the mood for whining then you are advised to turn back now.

I feel so depressed and cheated out of my teen years. Sure I had been isolated before but I moved to a small school and I was making friends and I thought a turn around was in the cards. When the abuse started happening I pushed my friends away and have been alone ever since. I feel so cheated. I feel like I had a somewhat normal life ahead, sure I wouldn't have been the captain of the football team or prom king but I think I would have had friends and maybe a girlfriend or 2. My abuse happened when I was 13 (I was left back so I was in 7th grade though) . Everytime I see kids of that age I feel so bad I want to cry. I sometimes see teens names on the ER patient list of the hospital I work at. Its so depressing. A few nights ago I saw a boy named Brandon (13) on the list. I also happened to be filling the drug dispenser when he was just getting ready to leave. Dispute his arm in a sling he seemed happy and well adjusted. Oh Brandon please please enjoy your childhood when it's gone it's gone.

Well I'm going to sleep off my depression a bit. Thanks for listening

_________________________"Being with people that understand you...Priceless"

"and i don't want the world to see me, cause i don't think that they'd understand"

"You don't know what love is...you just do as your told"

"My life has changed. What you take as a simple thing, is not so simple for me anymore"

Thank you, thank you for the post. Early/mid teens for my CSA after years of physical, verbal, emotional abuse on the home front. I know EXACTLY the feelings you're describing.

These people really fucked me up. As I've examined my high school years - as I've been able to digest it - I've realized the depth of it. Socially - as an adolescent - I can understand and accept it. Acedemically, however, it was a mess.

I couldn't concentrate in class. I would fall asleep (all the way into college). Stuff like math and science which I'd been able to "get" just became gibberish. I feel like I lost so damn much...and never really recovered. College degree eluded me, though I did well with technical schools and training that was narrowly focused on my interests. I feel like I had the ability to do more and got shortchanged.

It hit home with me as far as the teen years, what I would give to have them back in a normal way. I too now having a teenage am proud that he has not had to endure what I did (nor does he know) but he seems to fit in well with friends at school, has a decent social life, is kind and considerate of others. I also am drawn to reading stories of abuse and I really end up torturing myself and beat myself up that I could have done something different as I read stories and so many sound familiar and in some way it gives me a temp feeling that I know i couldnt have really done anything and all these boys and girls being abused probably feel the same way.

Measure by measure or in one swipe CSA took the innocence from us. In some cases, we buy it back with interest until the mortgagee is satisfied. You have every right to feel sad and angry. I was also 13 when it happened. To the outside world, I was a motivated athlete and scholar. On the inside, I was an angry mess just trying to leave IT in the past. It was a nice disguise, but one that did me a disservice because it hid the truth that much deeper. You see, I paid a price of being so driven doing things instead of building relationships.

I felt like "Simon" in Lord of the Flies. I had info and insight and no one to share it with for fear of becoming the sow where others were "...heavy and fulfilled upon her" while the butterflies still danced...

The teenage years are ephemeral in the best of circumstances, and I suspect my own sepia-toned recollections upon closer look are more imperfect than I like to admit. I recently shared an old picture of myself via PM. It was taken less than a week after my CSA. You can see the despair in my face...and though I thought I was a man---I really was just a scared kid.

To make it up to myself, I've recently resolved to try my best to console that little kid and live life well for his sake. My current self depends on it. I know I fall short, and that is when you hear from me on MS. Nostalgia is a powerful force---entire wars are fought over the perceived past---either internally or externally, as individuals and as nations. Fight that battle, but don't become a casualty. The present and future are still yours to shape.

I also felt like I had lost something. But I think we tend to view those "normal" childhood times as a golden thing mostly because we had bad ones. Childhood is a state of confusion and hard adjustment at the best of times. It's also a time when no one has control over their lives, so everyone struggles to make do, no matter what their circumstances. We had some serious stuff to deal with that others didn't, but their road was only differently hard, differently complex.

So now I think we didn't lose anything, we just had a particular childhood filled with particular fears and angst. No one stole our childhood, they just gave us something tough to deal with.

And now, as adults who survived that tough time, we, like the other adults, get to have some control over our experiences.

We're no longer trapped by the weakness of a child's vulnerable position relative to the world, so we can open the door and safely live our lives. Now we get to choose the people we know, we can protect ourselves and open ourselves as we see fit.

It's good to grow up.

It's good to be an adult.

It's good to let the childhood fade away into long ago memories, neither regretted nor treasured, just past.

For a while I thought about my inner child and tried to connect to him. In doing so I found I didn't need to look very far. He's me.

Past and present and future, we're still ourselves.

And we get this wonderful life to live, and these fascinating problems to manage, and all the complexity of it is so rich and full of the depth of human experience.

It's neither bad nor good to have had pain, it's just more experience to add to the spectrum.

Every state of mind is like a ride at an amusement park, interesting, wild and incredible, varied, dark and light...and shared by countless millions of others, just like all of us and all the "normals," through all the years of our collective time on the planet.

We're not ever alone in our pain or our joy because endless millions have felt the same pains and joys.

To me, opening on this shared experience, feeling that sharing when I feel my own pain or joy, makes the whole thing so full. It's not that it's necessarily good or bad, it's just so real, like the wind or the rain.

I feel the same way. My last period of CSA was in 3rd grade (though emotional and sometimes physical abuse lasted through high school). The effects were opposite from some people: academically, I was fine. Everyone thought I was a perfect goody goody. No one saw that what I was doing was hiding from myself, working myself to death, trying to atone for my sense of shame and worthlessness. When it wasn't school work, it was volunteering or taking care of other people at the expense of taking care of myself. They all thought I was some super-religious nerd, when all I was trying to do was overcome what I thought of as the sin inside me. A lot of people feel for the "trouble-makers" and "underachievers" and I really do think that is so important, but I look at the kids who are desperately over-achieving and "helpful" and wonder what it is that they are trying to run away from. I love it when I see an adolescent taking time to just explore their own unique so-called "selfish" interest and dreams, because neither I nor my parents believed that I was worthy of that.

_________________________
I will always be your championI will always tear the monsters from you

I can relate a bit to what you mean. Throughout high school and college, I had a difficult time making good friends with other males. I feel like I really missed out on a lot of regular male bonding type stuff that "regular" guys experience in those years. I feel a bit cheated as well. I think about it often, but try not to dwell on it too much.

Sometimes I guess I hope I can get some of that back and make up for it now, but a bit too old to being young stupid activities.

These memories are bad. The pain is real. The shame unbearable. I personally lost a great deal. I lost brothers, I lost trust, I lost innocence. I was four- The other kids watched me being led into the building and never told. No one helped me. But they knew I was damaged from that day forward. They knew. Over and over and over. Little kids are not supposed to jo grown men. Young adolescent boys are not supposed to learn sex by giving a bj... I attended no dances, kissed no girls, took no long walks with a special girl. No, what I did was learn to disassociate from the reality of my world. My world became silence and shame and aloneness. Until I was 17. And then it just became a heavy burden.

So like Only, I had no childhood, no teenage years. Just years of perfecting my disassociation skills. And it made me very sad. But I had it under control. Had placed it as a part of "just a different" growing up, as you say. But life became good. My kids grew. I grew. So proud, so very proud. And I turned 50. And had the surgery. And was awakened that very day to the "terrible ugly"... and now the 13 yrs of child sexual assault are again as new today as the oral rape of middle age and I am beyond sad as to what has been taken from me again. And I can't possibly get it back at this age. Do I dare dance or hold another's hand or steal a kiss. I think not. I find myself alone in the real world again, silent and shamed. And I can't disassociate from- wish I could...My heart is broken and I have yet to fix it. ...at any age, sexual assault steals away the very soul of its victim. And it's a long, long journey to reclaim it. It all just makes me very very sad.

Guess I now know what is meant by trigger. Sorry if I offended. Still learning.

The effects were opposite from some people: academically, I was fine. Everyone thought I was a perfect goody goody. No one saw that what I was doing was hiding from myself, working myself to death, trying to atone for my sense of shame and worthlessness. When it wasn't school work, it was volunteering or taking care of other people at the expense of taking care of myself. They all thought I was some super-religious nerd, when all I was trying to do was overcome what I thought of as the sin inside me.

You describe my brother... he was the straight-A's, teacher's pet, always volunteering for everything kid. I was the juvenile delinquent. We went through the same shit.

And then there was the day I had to talk him out of committing suicide. We were 18. He would have been the kid about who everyone would have said "He was suck a good kid, so smart, he has such a bright future ahead. How could he do that?". Everyone knew I was fucked up - it was easy to see, but no one suspected that he had been through hell and back, too...

_________________________
I guess what I'm trying to sayIs whose life is it anyway because livin'Living is the best revengeYou can play-- Def Leppard

I'm still working through this, too. I can say that I've learned that the 'narrative' (if that's the right word) of childhood was taken away from me and I'm walking through life feeling like "if I could go back and do it right ... everything will be different." Maybe, I'm right but we both know that going back is impossible.

Cormac McCarthy said something somewhat profound in the book version of No Country for Old Men: “All the time you spend tryin to get back what's been took from you there's more goin out the door. After a while you just try and get a tourniquet on it.”

I don't have a solution myself to the problem - I'd love to have one myself - I just know that there's a limit to what I can do about it. As much as it hurts, I force myself to change the subject and do the best I can, with what I have, today.

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